"I started to run after him, when a flicker of light caught my eye. There in the straw that littered the roots of the ivy vines by the steps, a little tongue of flame was lapping up the tangle of leaves!"
Bob jumped to his feet as if he had heard the clang of a fire bell. "Good enough for him, the old fossil! Did it burn his house down?"
"Came mighty near it," said Sure Pop, looking at the scars on his hands. "He had a sick wife in there all alone, and if I hadn't happened along just then—
"Well, anyway," he went on cheerfully, "I got the fire out at last. And the King's meaning was made plain—it is one thing to have wisdom and another thing to use it. So I didn't ask the wizard to join the Safety Scouts, after all."
"I should say NOT!" cried Bob and Betty with one voice. "But where did you find your Scouts?" added Bob.
"Well, the next idea I had was to ask mothers, for mothers give up much of their time, anyhow, to keeping children out of harm's way. I found one whose house looked so trim and neat, and her children so clean and happy, that I had almost made up my mind to invite her to join—when my eye fell on a shining butcher knife hanging beside the kitchen table, where even the baby could reach it without half trying.
"And that wasn't all I saw. There was a saucer of fly poison on the window sill! Then I saw the mother starting to carry out a pail of water to scrub the steps, when the brass knocker on the door gave a thump, and she left that hot water right there in the middle of the floor while she talked to a peddler!
"Just then the baby came toddling across the room. He got safely past the scalding water and the fly poison, but the next moment I saw him climb up on a chair, open the medicine chest, and grab a bottle from the bottom shelf—the bottom shelf, Betty, of all shelves in the house! Out came the cork, and up went the bottle to his lips, just as I saw to my horror a skull and crossbones on its label. Like a flash I—"
"What's a skull and crossbones, Sure Pop?" broke in Betty.
"Poison sign!" explained Bob, shortly. "Don't interrupt! Go on, Sure Pop!"